Revision as of 13:20, 25 November 2012

SLiM is an acronym for Simple Login Manager. SLiM is simple, lightweight and easily configurable. SLiM is used by some because it does not require the dependencies of GNOME or KDE and can help make a lighter system for users that like to use lightweight desktops like Xfce, Openbox, and Fluxbox.

Multiple environments

To be able to choose from multiple desktop environments, SLiM can be setup to log you into whichever you choose.

Put a case statement similar to this one in your ~/.xinitrc file and edit the sessions variable in /etc/slim.conf to match the names that trigger the case statement. You can choose the session at login time by pressing F1. Note that this feature is experimental.

Note that, in this script, the default option simply executes, e.g., exec icewm (if that is the default session), without icewmbg and icewmtray. You may want simply to repeat everything you've put under, e.g., icewm) again under *). When done use F1 to cycle through sessions in SLiM.

Themes

The archlinux-themes-slim packages contains several different themes. Look in the directory of /usr/share/slim/themes to see the themes available. Enter the theme name on the current_theme line in /etc/slim.conf:

#current_theme default
current_theme archlinux-simplyblack

To preview a theme run while an instance of the Xorg server is running by:

Shutdown, reboot, suspend, exit, launch terminal from SLiM

You may shutdown, reboot, suspend, exit or even launch a terminal from the SLiM login screen. To do so, use the values in the username field, and the root password in the password field:

To launch a terminal, enter console as the username (defaults to xterm which must be installed separately... edit /etc/slim.conf to change terminal preference)

For shutdown, enter halt as the username

For reboot, enter reboot as the username

To exit to bash, enter exit as the username

For suspend, enter suspend as the username (suspend is disabled by default, edit /etc/slim.conf as root to uncomment the suspend_cmd line and, if necessary modify the suspend command itself (e.g. change /usr/sbin/suspend to sudo /usr/sbin/pm-suspend))

SLiM init error with rc.d daemon

If you initialize SLiM with /etc/rc.conf inside the DAEMONS array and it fails to initialize it's most likely a lock file issue. SLiM creates a lock file in /var/lock on each initialization, however, in most cases the lock folder in /var does not exist preventing SLiM from initializing. Check to make sure /var/lock exists, if it does not you can create it by typing the following:

# mkdir /var/lock/

Power-off error with Splashy

If you use Splashy and SLiM, sometimes you can't power-off or reboot from menu in GNOME, Xfce, LXDE or others. Check your /etc/slim.conf and /etc/splash.conf; set the DEFAULT_TTY=7 same as xserver_arguments vt07.

Power-off tray icon fails

If your power off tray icon fails, it could be due to not having root privileges. To start a tray icon with root privileges, be sure to have SLiM start the program. Edit /etc/slim.conf as follows:

sessionstart_cmd /path/to/tray/icon/program &

Login information with SLiM

By default, SLiM fails to log logins to utmp and wtmp which causes who, last, etc. to misreport login information. To fix this edit your slim.conf as follows:

SLiM and Gnome Keyring

If you are using SLiM to launch a Gnome session and have trouble accessing your keyring, for example not being automatically authenticated on login, add the following lines to /etc/pam.d/slim (as discussed here).

to /etc/pam.d/gnome-screensaver for example (replace gnome-screensaver with slimlock, slock, whatever you use). If you don't do that, your keyring is locked when screen is locked by your screensaver and not unlocked again after logging back in.

However, this fix alone no longer works since Gnome 2.30. Further changes are necessary as described here. Modifying the login_cmd line in /etc/slim.conf:

As of GNOME 3, simply adding dbus-launch after ck-launch-session will work, without needing to edit /etc/pam.d/slim.

As of GNOME 3.1, you need to add dbus-launch after ck-launch-session and edit /etc/pam.d/{slim,passwd}, otherwise the keyring will not be automatically unlocked. I never tried it on 3.0, so maybe the above information about GNOME 3 is wrong.

As of GNOME 3.4, you need to edit /etc/pam.d/{slim,passwd} as mentioned above, so that /etc/pam.d/slim looks like:

The solutions mentioned here and also further information are found here.

If you have problems keeping the keyring unlocked for longer sessions, there is another thing that Gnome does:
Look at /etc/xdg/autostart/{gnome-keyring-gpg.desktop, gnome-keyring-pkcs11.desktop, gnome-keyring-secrets.desktop, gnome-keyring-ssh.desktop}.

Append the following lines to .xinitrc just before you start your wm (example here is awesome wm):

After login check if there is only one gnome-keyring-daemon instance running (ps -A ). If those lines are executed too early then you have 4 instances running which is not good.

You also should notice that seahorse for example does not show any pkcs11 errors anymore and that your keyring is unlocked all the time and does not lock itself anymore. Finally gnome-keyring is fully functional like in Gnome. See also here.

SLiM and Environment Variables

This article or section is out of date.

Reason:/etc/pam.d/slim no longer has the given lines. This problem may also have been fixed. (Discuss in Talk:SLiM#)

If you have trouble with environment variables changing after a session is started, one cause could be the module pam_env.so, by default, reads the file /etc/environment and sets up the environment accordingly.

For example: I use SLiM, which fires up a XFCE4 session upon valid authentication. When this is done my terminal (xfterm4) can't print Unicode characters (LC_* environment variables has been defaulted/altered to POSIX). But when I start XFCE4 manually, like so: startxfce4, Unicode characters on my terminal works fine.

This can be fixed by adding this to /etc/environment or your user specific file: $HOME/.pam_environment:

# You can change these to fit your preference, of course.
LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="C"

Alternatively, you can modify the line in /etc/pam.d/slim from:

session required pam_env.so

To:

session required pam_env.so envfile=<yourfile>

Where <yourfile> is the name of the file you want PAM to recognize as your default environment file, when starting a new session from SLiM.

Setting DPI with SLiM

The Xorg server generally picks up the DPI but if it doesn't you can specify it to SLiM. If you set the DPI with the argument -dpi 96 in /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc it will not work with SLiM. To fix this change your slim.conf from:

xserver_arguments -nolisten tcp vt07

to

xserver_arguments -nolisten tcp vt07 -dpi 96

Use a random theme

Use the current_theme variable as a comma separated list to specify a set from which to choose. Selection is random.

Move the whole session to another VT

Lets say you have commented out tty terminals 3-6 as you may not use them. (You may use screen and therefore only need one terminal)
So, to move the X-Server you need to change one number in the /etc/slim.conf file. Just a few lines down you should see:

xserver_arguments -nolisten tcp vt07

Simply change the vt07 to lets say vt03 as there is no agetty started there.